The Blue Line, or My Inauguration Heartbreak

It is hard to talk about, even now, two days later. Yes, the country has changed. Yes, there is a new energy in the air. Yes, I was in front of the Capitol the day Obama took the oath of office. And yes, I missed the whole thing.

My inauguration experience will be familiar to tens of thousands of other lucky ticket holders in the orange, purple, and blue lines. It is cold, scary, and heart-breaking. It goes like this:

Over the course of Barack Obama's campaign, my girlfriend and I made an effort to donate our time and (a little) money when and where we could. We canvassed in New Hampshire. We made phone calls before the primaries. We made signs and buttons and even snowmen for Obama. Our time spent on the campaign was fun and we have been more than rewarded for our efforts: we were ten feet from Obama in a high school gym, we attended his Oprah/Obama event in Manchester, we even got into the stadium in Denver at the DNC. So by all means, Obama's ascent to the Presidency has provided us with one hell of a great ride over the last year. And we have no regrets.

The icing on the cake, however, came when we were generously given two tickets to the blue section at Obama's inauguration. So--bursting with excitement--on Sunday the 18th, we drove down to DC.

We, like many others I imagine, barely slept the night of the 19th. The alarm was set for pre-dawn and the first trains into DC started at 5:30. We got up, got ready, and boarded the train at 6am. Checking and double-checking the directions that came in our pre-inauguration packets, we planned our route to the Blue Gate. "Exit Metro and Federal Center" it read. Right. Will do--but that required a transfer. So getting off at the transfer station we decided to double check with a Metro guard that we were in fact planning to get on the right train.

"Oh that station's closed."

"...but our packet tells us..."

"No. What you've gotta do is get off on the..."

Long story short: our packets were now wrong and we got off the train on the wrong side of the Mall. Fourteen blocks, a sea of a million people, fifteen-foot chainlink fences, and thousands of soldiers with machine guns were all that now stood in our way. We found the points at which we were allowed to cross the street--there were two intermittent street crossings in those fourteen blocks. There were no signs directing traffic. No uniformed guards or soldiers or cops knew anything about where we should be or how we could get there.

At one point, my girlfriend and I stepped back from an angry mob waiting to cross the street because the crowd had become too urgent and unsettled. We stood in the shrubbery, talking with an elderly woman.

"I should have stayed at home," said the woman eyeing the mob.

"Yeah. We'll just have to come back for Michelle's inauguration in 2017," I said.

The floodgate broke. The soldiers were allowing us to cross. We inserted ourselves into the mob and shuffled through.

The Mall was fairly open at that point. It was still before 7AM, and while it was filling up rapidly, there was still room to move. So, we hustled. We jogged across the grass, and then up the 14 blocks until we found the blue line. We jumped in at the end and breathed a sigh of relief. We made it. With over four hours to spare. We were golden. Cold, anxious, and out of breath. But golden.

The hours passed. We shuffled a few feet every twenty minutes or so. Eight o'clock arrived. The security check point officially opened--or so our packets read. But the line stayed put. Nine o'clock came. We were fifty feet closer. The temperature dropped to sixteen degrees. People began to grow suspicious and tired. Old women sat where they could. Children began to fidget and whine.

At ten o'clock we turned the corner around the building. The Blue Gate was now tantalizingly in the distant view. But under the Blue Gate was a sea of tens of thousands of people. Unorganized. Uncontrolled. Undirected. Our line turned out to be a polite fiction. It ended in a leaderless mob scene.

Eventually our line plunged into the sea. We were surrounded on all sides by frustrated and cold people--each trying to jockey for position. In the distance, we heard faint music...it was now 11 and the event was starting. The urgency in the stagnant crowd grew frenzied.

"LET US IN! LET US IN!" we chanted to the people we assumed were up ahead of us running this operation, but had no evidence of their existence. No one responded. The shoving was forcing us forward, into a smaller and smaller space. People couldn't get out. People couldn't get back. People couldn't raise their hands to scratch their noses. We were stuck and missing the changing of the world.

Through the sea of shoulders and faces, a few old women were crying. Children were asleep or in tantrums. Young men were brazenly pushing forward, convinced of their own importance. We were just trying to remain standing. And then...the cannons. Obama was President of the United States.

The crowd didn't disperse. They pushed harder forward hoping to get in soon enough to witness, at least, the Inaugural Address. Fathers lifted their kids up from the ground to protect them from the crush. Husbands did their best to protect their wives from the push behind. The Blue Gate that had been teasing us long in the distance was now over head. We were thirty feet from the security checkpoint. Obama's address hadn't yet started. A slim chance remained that we'd make it.

Then, people in front of us started falling and jumping. The push from behind had forced us into a metal barrier that was invisible to all but those falling over it. We were forced over as well. The polite folks among us helped elderly husbands lift over their elderly wives who were absolutely mortified to suffer such embarrassment.

We turned to see the entry ten feet in front of us. Still no indication that the Address had begun. At last a man spoke up on a megaphone.

"Go to the Mall!" he said in garbled megaphone-ese. The gates closed and my heart broke open. It was over. We turned, dejected, to look at the sea of people we'd have to cross to get back to where we started four and a half hours ago.

In an effort to maintain some perspective while recounting this event, I should point out that many others in DC that day had far worse a day than described here. Parents were separated from their children. Ted Kennedy went to the hospital. A child was struck by a car. The ground was littered with stepped on cameras, missing gloves, canes. So, while my day was heart breaking and I find my brain agonizingly full of "If only...," it was an experience shared by ten thousand people. And many people had it much worse.

So, to all those folks in the purple tunnel, the orange line, and the lines for the balls in the evening, you're not alone in missing out. You can still say you were there.

Comments

[Cassandra Crumpton]

When we arrived at Union Station it was just a taste of how bad it would get.

My husband, 4 year old, and my self stood in line from 7am until we finally made it to the front of the BLUE gate at around 11:55 am. As soon as I got to the front security informed us they were shutting down. We pleaded, we were being pushed from behind, we were afraid that our son would be crushed after all we had done to prevent that the whole time we were standing in the 'line'- more like a mob.

The crowd surged behind us and pushed us past security. We ran away from the gate for fear that the gate would be overtaken and we would be trampled. During the crowd surge we three made it in along with a very few others.

Thankfully my family was unharmed, and we made it in time to see the big event. My heart broke for those who did not get through. There was a complete failure of crowd control of masses at the blue gate.t.

I want to say thank-you to those in the crowd who were considerate of my son, Cash, at the Blue Gate. His cat Huxley was very happy to see him when we got home. We thanked the powers that be that we got through it unharmed and got to share a piece of history with him that he will carry throughout his life.

[nicholasfromWA]

It sounds like I was very close to where the writer was, but some inconsistencies jump out. If he was just turning the corner of the (Hubert Humphrey) building at 11, it seems VERY unlikely that he made it to within 10 feet of the gate. I had turned that corner long before 11...I was about 20 feet from the gate when it closed. Secondly, there were THREE layers of barricades that I had to pass over, within 50 feet of the gate, not just one. Finally...if you were within 10 feet of the gate, why didn't you proceed to the left with the rest of us, through the silver gate (after the megaphone guy said, "Go to your left. Go to the mall")? I got onto the mall just as Obama started speaking, and was able make my way almost all the way up to the pond...

I had reached the back of the Blue Gate herd at 8:30. The writer implies that he was in line around 7. It doesn't exactly jive with what I saw. Had I been in line at 7, I probably would've made it in...

[kashabear]

my experience at the purple gate is nearly identical. I started out at 4 AM at RFK stadium and 8 hours later was standing at the purple gate only to have it shut in my face. I did everything I was told to do, earlier than asked. The lack of knowledge by the officers, volunteers, National Guardsmen, Park Police etc was horrendous. NO ONE knew anything and I was misdirected all day long. I hope that planners review all the ways Jan 20 fell apart for thousands of people.

I heard suggestions that signed photos and programs will be sent to those who had tickets and did not get in. Nice, empty gesture. NOTHING can give us back that lost moment when we stood outside gates unable to hear or see this historic event. I cannot even watch it (thankfully I had people DVD it, but it does sit there unwatched so far).

I worked as a FULLTIME volunteer, 80 hour weeks without pay. I did that because I beleived in Obama as our next president. I never expected to be compensated, but the two tickets I was given for the purple section were the best gift I could have asked for. of course, I thought I would get in to see Obama sworn in. Jan 20 is both the best day of my life in a very long time, and one of the worst. not the memories of the day I thought I would have, that is for sure.

[catsrflyfishn]

I, too, was in the Blue ticket line and may have possibly been one of the last persons let through the gate. It was disappointing to say the least. If it had been anyone other than Barack Obama taking the Oath of Office, I think the crowd could have become extremely violent.

There was still a bright side to all of this. I met so many nice people with interesting stories. And in the end, people still hugged each other. It was a long day and one that I will never forget, despite the fact that I missed most of the events.

[J.S. McDougall - Huffpost Blogger]

Once you got in, were you able to get to a place where you could see?

[ohioan73]

I'm afraid of unorganized crowds. I'm a great candidate for being trampled to death as I am a very small woman. I have been in protests with hundreds, sometimes 1500 people crowded together but every single person was trained and organized to follow signals should we need to move back, forward, chant or be silent. You couldn't even pay me to go to something with 2 million random people. You guys are very brave and I thank you for going and representing the rest of us with crowd phobias. I watched on TV and blogged with the regulars on HuffPo. That was good enough for me.

[Donna Rose]

I share your disappointment and frustration. I was one of thousands in a similarly distressing position at the Purple gate. It continues to boggle my mind how something that was planned with this kind of precision allowed key entry points to fall into complete chaos. Part of me shrugs and says, "That's the way it goes sometimes" but another part of me needs to understand what happened and why.

People came from all over the world at great expense with the same sense of joy and pride that you and I shared that morning only to have that moment snatched from them. At this point there is no apology that can make it right, no explanation that can fix it, no "next time" to count upon. Perhaps most galling are attempts by those who should have been in charge to minimize what happened and shift blame for the entire fiasco. From the length of the line in front and behind me coming out of that tunnel I'd be shocked if there aren't more than 10 or 15 thousand of us with similar tales of woe. That's not an oversight. That's gross negligence and we're all damn lucky nobody got seriously hurt or worse because of it.

As you say, it is important to keep things in perspective. However, that can't excuse what happened. We did exactly as we were directed so we held our part of the bargain. Someone else, however, failed us all.